The Need for Feed

Much has been written and said about those unfortunate people who don’t get enough to eat – but what about the four-legged friends who suffer the same fate?

These undernourished pets are the intended beneficiaries of Students Helping Our Pickerington Pets, a pet food pantry that began in 2012.

Founded by Pickerington resident Tricia Gerencser, the pantry – known informally as SHOPP – is operated by National Honor Society students at Pickerington High School North.

Its chief goals are to assist pet owners who have found themselves in tough financial situations and to educate the community on pet health and nutrition. Dog and cat owners alike can take advantage of SHOPP’s offerings.

To qualify for assistance, one must live in the boundaries of the Pickerington Local School District, and to apply, one must fill out a card and demonstrate one’s household income is at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. These requirements are the same as those used by the PCMA Food Pantry of Pickerington.

Additional SHOPP guidelines call for recipients to get their pets spayed or neutered and pledge not to leave their animals outside unattended, among other things. The pantry will consider requests for assistance from people who do not need help for their own pets, but have a friend or neighbor who does and is too proud to ask, Gerencser says.

Most of the items provided – which include food as well as toys, bedding, blankets and cat litter – are donated by Petco and the Andersons. Donation boxes are also set up at a number of local businesses – including Foot Solutions on Hill Road North, Petco in Reynoldsburg and Byers Airport Subaru in Hamilton Road – and businesses can call the students who run the program to get donation boxes of their own.

Educational information includes foods not to give to pets and healthful foods owners might not think to utilize.

“We teach them how to add regular produce, foods that are accessible from a regular food pantry, … to an animal’s diet,” Gerencser says.

Not only is produce cheap and often available for free from food pantries such as PCMA, giving one’s pets such high-quality food products keeps the pets healthier – which means lower veterinarian bills. And a lot of owners simply don’t know they can feed, for example, potatoes or carrots to their dogs.

As long as the animal is healthy, “You can give a dog a whole egg,” says Gerencser. “People don’t know that.”

The pantry also provides lists of foods never to give to pets – onions, raisins, grapes and chocolate – and gives advice on commercial foods to avoid, as some of them lack nutritional value.

“You’re not getting a better deal by buying a cheaper food,” says Gerencser.

Proper animal nutrition is an important consideration for pet owners, says Dr. Julie Miles, owner of Compassionate Care Animal Hospital on Hill Road North. A bad diet can lead to hair coat problems or obesity, and owners should keep an eye out for ear or skin infections that may have been caused by food allergies, Miles says.

“Not everyone can afford a high-quality premium diet,” she says. “There are good diets within every price range.”

Dental health is another factor that is substantially affected by the food an animal eats, Miles says. For dogs, dry food is better than canned food because hard kibble does a better job of scraping tartar off teeth, but for cats, canned food is nutritionally superior and, in addition, cats don’t have grinding molars to improve chewing.

“For dogs, the canned food can be hard on their teeth, especially for smaller dogs, so if (owners) feed canned food, they need to remember to either brush their dogs’ teeth or provide them with chew (items),” Miles says. “With cats, it’s really important to make sure we get enough protein in them – dry food can be too low in protein and too high in carbohydrates for cats.”

Though the pantry’s offerings come without monetary cost, it does utilize a pay-it-forward system by which recipients may “pay” for their items with good deeds so the items they receive feel more like gifts than first aid, Gerencser says. Creating handmade thank-you cards, building pet beds from donated material, cleaning up yards, walking others’ dogs and consoling owners whose animals have died are some of the ways recipients have paid it forward.

“Everybody maintains a modicum of dignity, and at no time will anybody ever be put in an unpleasant or compromising position where they feel like they’re being first-aided,” says Gerencser. “They are being gifted.”

Though Gerencser is working with local veterinarian Dr. William Young of Chevington Animal Hospital to obtain a permanent place to house food and other items, she keeps the items in her garage now and distributes them from her car in the parking lot of the Violet Township Administrative Offices. Distribution occurs two days a month, with the next month’s distribution days being announced at the current month’s.

Though the animals are its chief beneficiary, the pantry also pays dividends to the students, who, by running it, gain exposure to the experience of running a business.

Gerencser, a longtime animal lover, was inspired to create the food pantry after she found herself helping a neighbor who had fallen on hard times. She would take casseroles to the neighbor, claiming she had made too much, and saw that the money the neighbor saved on food often went to buy food for her dogs. On the advice of her son, a North graduate, she talked to North’s NHS adviser to get a program set up at the school.

She has five animals of her own: three cats and two dogs. She adopted the most recent addition, a cat, after it wandered into her garage to die and she helped nurse it back to health.

Though some people advise owners who cannot afford pet food to give up their pets, SHOPP understands the special relationship between owner and pet and strives to allow them to keep their beloved animals, Gerencser says.

“We don’t want to break that bond,” she says.

Those interested in helping out by donating money or food, or hosting a donation box, should call 614-863-1891.